Search results for: "Feelings"
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- Pleasant Practice, Painful Practice… So we bring the other factors that shape our experience—our ways of directing our thoughts to a topic and evaluating it—and we apply them to the breath in a way that also gives rise to the way we shape the mind through feelings and perceptions. In other words, we have labels we place on the breath, and we have perceptions that tell …
- Heedful of Small Dangers… If you feel that these qualities have an influence on your mind, it’s hard to withstand the same influences from outside. But if you can learn to be skeptical about your own thoughts and opinions, it’s a lot easier to be skeptical about other people’s—skeptical in a healthy way. In other words, you have to examine things that come into …
- The Open Committee… If you allow it to seep through the body, let the breath work through the body, around all the knots of tension, it feels really good to be right here. At the same time, you’ve got a place where you can observe things as they come, watch them as they go. You come to realize that there really is a committee in here …
- Safety in an Uncertain World… Mental is perceptions and feelings: the labels you put on things and the feeling tones you focus on. Your emotions are composed of these things, and you want to learn how to see them that way. They may be old habits. We may say that something we’ve done since childhood is really going to be hard to dig out, but it’s not …
- W.W.B.R.… If the mind is feeling obstreperous and entangled with things, Ajaan Maha Boowa’s image is of a tree in the middle of a forest, which is unlike a tree out in a meadow. If a tree’s in a meadow and you want to cut it down, you don’t have to think too much about which direction you’re going to fell …
- Patterns to Happiness… Try to see what rhythm feels best for the body right now. You can focus in different spots in the body. Then you can explore the way the breath energy feels in the body. How does it feel when you breathe in? What kind of posture do you have? What happens if you change your posture? Try to sit with good posture and notice …
- Heedful of Death… It’s good not to be surprised by death when it comes, because if you’re too surprised, there’s also going to be the feeling of: “Why so soon? It’s not right! I have so much more life to live.” Well, you don’t at that point. “But I should have more life!” Well, what kind of should is that? You have …
- Possessed by Emotions… perceptions on the one hand and feelings on the other. You know these things all have their causes. Some of the causes are in the present moment; some of the causes are in the past. You can’t do much about the past, but you can do a lot about the present. Say an unskillful emotion moves in: First you’ve got to ask …
- Goodwill for the Real World… Who is there in the world for whom you feel ill will? Start out with people who are easy to feel goodwill for, and then go to those who are harder and harder until you get to the ones where you find it really hard. Then ask yourself: What would you gain, what would anybody gain, by seeing that person suffer? You think it …
- Treating the Diseases of the Mind… An important part of concentration is that you feel comfortable with the object. You find it interesting—something that engages you. If it puts you to sleep, it’s the wrong object. Fortunately, with the breath, you can work with it in lots of different ways. Of the various objects, it has the most variety, in the sense that you can use it to …
- Directing the Flow… If you simply feel bottled up by the precepts, there will come a point where you’ll explode. You have to use wisdom, you have to use discernment in sticking with the precepts. When there’s a desire inside that comes up against a precept, that wants to say something that the precepts don’t allow, look in your mind for the desire that …
- Top Priorities… If they get pushed back, then how are you going to deal properly with all the affairs of the world, all the affairs of daily life? What strength do you have to offer? You may feel that you owe it to the people around you to attend to their concerns first, but they can see when you’re beginning to get frazzled, when you …
- Metta Through Samvega… That image describes the feeling called samvega, a sense of dismay—or even terror—over the way life is lived, and an urgency to want to get out of it. But it’s also a useful image to hold in mind when you’re thinking of spreading thoughts of goodwill. Goodwill is one of the guardian meditations, in the sense that it guards you …
- Fully Absorbed… If you feel blocked, you can ask yourself, “Where’s the blockage?” If you’re feeling ill at ease, what’s causing that? If you’re anxious, what’s causing the anxiety, what can you do to drop that? And see what comes. Don’t do too much analysis, just pose the question and see if an answer comes. And if an answer comes …
- The Wear & Tear of Life… Try to breathe in a way that feels healing for the body and refreshing for the mind—smoothing over any rough spots, and helping to fill up some of the gaps. Life has a lot of other reflections to remind us that it’s unsure, full of aging, illness, death, and separation. And we still have a lot of craving for the things that …
- Freedom from Beliefs… So if you find that it’s not happening, you can remind yourself, “Maybe my idea of the breath is not as skillful as it could be.” You hear about Ajaan Lee talking about the different ways that the breath energy can flow in the body, and you ask yourself, “Where do I feel that? What would it be like if I could feel …
- The Joy of Curiosity… When you breathe in, where does the breath energy feel like it’s coming in? Does it feel like it’s coming in or does or does it feel like it’s radiating out from within the body? Look for that. This is one of the reasons why the Buddha lists directed thought and evaluation as among the first necessary steps in getting the …
- Think Calmly about Death… When you see courageous people, it’s not that they don’t feel fear. They feel fear but they don’t let it take over. You have to rewire yourself so when the thought of death comes, you don’t feel desperate. In Thailand, when people are startled, they tend to say, taai laew, which means basically “I’m dead”—which is one of …
- Suffering Starts Before Life… You’re more aware of what you’re creating out of those aggregates—in the same way that when you’re drinking water, you’re drinking hydrogen and oxygen, but you don’t feel hydrogen, you don’t feel oxygen, you feel the water. Water is what you see. But the hydrogen and oxygen are in there. Now, as you crave, you’re looking …
- Xtreme Drama… When she was feeling down, she could breathe in a way that would add more breath energy, make the body lighter, lighter, lighter, so she didn’t feel so weighed down all the time. And without the physical experience of being weighed down, her depressive mind states didn’t have so much to latch onto. This began to cut through the pattern. Similarly, when …
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